I don't necessarily agree with Bernie Sanders about the medicine either, but his diagnosis is correct: the Democratic Party abandoned middle America and the working class, so they abandoned it.
America decided in the 1970s to liquidate its interior and its manufacturing base to make Wall Street rich from the labor arbitrage trade, and did so with the full throated support of both parties.
I live in the outer suburbs of a middle American city. The idea that all Trump supporters are cult members is vastly overblown. There is some of that, but much of his support is exasperation. Rural and working class Americans have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but down. The choice is to vote for Trump or keep watching everyone commit suicide with fentanyl. They know Trump might be full of shit or might not have any real solutions, but they also know Democrats and mainstream Republicans will continue to sell them out.
It's also important to understand that for the most part working class and small town Americans don't want welfare, which is the only thing the Democratic Party (possibly, maybe) offers them. They want jobs. They want to feel useful, to do useful things. Unless you are disabled, accepting welfare is disgraceful. I remember my mom (a lifelong Democrat BTW who hates Trump) feeling humiliated to use food stamps for a brief period when I was a kid. "These are for people who really need them. I don't need them." She worked as hard as she could to get off them. Americans want to do things.
MAGA is as much anti-traditional-Republican as it is anti-Democrat. In fact I know a few Trump voters whose hatred for the likes of Bush II and the Cheneys is greater than for Democrats. It's a third political party that has taken over the corpse of the Republican party that Bush II destroyed.
I didn't vote for Trump because I don't think he actually cares either, and I loathe the man in general. I also have two daughters, and his MAGA movement is full of people who cheer for pro-rape influencers like Andrew Tate or want to LARP the Handmaid's Tale. I can't vote for a movement that is openly allied with such people. Their performative scapegoating of LGBTQ people is gross too, and then there's the crazy autocrat ideologies lurking at the margins. Even if MAGA has some policy points I agree with, the movement is just too intellectually batty and personally disgusting to support.
I see nobody on the US political stage that I actually like. I voted for Harris as a "holding pattern" vote in the hope that something better will appear in the future. It's better to stay with the bad option than to go for obviously worse options. If you look around the world "just shaking things up" with nothing better waiting in the wings usually results in a bad outcome. Successful major political shifts or revolutions require a superior alternative with better ideas.